Everyone's Arcadia
by Guile
Summary: The crew of the Delphinus, past, present and future. Short story collection.
1. Polly, ingame

A/N: I decided to start a little project in honor of the (regrettably false) rumors that plans for SoA2 were to be announced during the last Tokyo show. I'm planning on writing a wide variety of short stories or drabbles, likely no more than a thousand words at most, each one focusing on one of Vyse's party or the crew of the Delphinus. Might be set pre-game, post-game, or during Skies of Arcadia.

Because out of all the games I've played, despite its various flaws, I've never played a game with such a sense of discovery, enthusiasm and fun as Skies of Arcadia.

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><p>Polly is den mother to twenty five children, aged 7 to 93. Some are well-behaved and helpful like Urala - such a sweet little thing - and Ilchymis who is at least polite and well-mannered. He was a man that was brought up right, Valuan though he is. "Lone Wolf" Lawrence, she has found, has a soft spot for animals, and Merida is not at all what she thought an 'exotic dancer' would be like back when she was living on Sailor's Island. Lovely girl, and very respectful of her elders. Hans, too, is a good boy who sends some of all the money he makes back to Centime and his little ones. Not like that brat Marco, who skips out on chores whenever he can to hang on Vyse's words like an eager puppy. Then there's TikaTika, who she's quite sure is going to fall off a rail someday and break his fool neck. Ryu-Kan keeps them up at night with the pounding and hiss of folding metal, and Izmael, Brabham and Kirala all wake them at the crack of dawn with some new idea that just has to be built immediately. Honestly, the Cupil fountain had to be started on the second it popped into Izmael's head? <em>Really<em>?

They all have their foibles, really. Osman's laugh, quite frankly, gives her the shivers, but that's nothing to what she feels upon looking into Kalifa's all-knowing coke-bottle glasses. She keeps trying to get Khazim and his men up out of the caves 'polishing their cannons' - and how she doesn't want to know what that's a euphemism for - but she might as well be trying to move the earth beneath her with will alone. Belle, poor girl, is going to end up halfway down one of her cannons one of these days. She's never seen a girl before or since even half as accident prone.

It is also a fact that she's having the time of her life on Crescent Isle. The next trip they take, she's going to get Vyse - who is a slave to his stomach, and therefore her cooking - to swing by Sailor's Island and see if Anne would like to sell the tavern and come live with them. Anne should meet her father - even if Polly still hasn't convinced the man to shave off that ridiculous beard yet - and she just wants to share this place with her.

Polly had scratched out a living in a sailor's port of call without any help from anybody long before she met Robinson, and she did it without descending to the kind of degrading work all too many young women found themselves in such a situation. She kept a tavern running and a family together by the sweat of her brow and strength of her will after he was lost at sea.

She knows what a treasure Crescent Isle is. A place where everyone works together for the good of all. Where each person has a skill to contribute and a role to fill. Headed up by a captain who, if you went to him with problems, would drop everything to help you out. How rare, how unusual it was in this world of Black Pirates and expansionist Valuans

Vyse is a man that would venture into hell just because it was there, but he has enough drive and skill and luck to come back out again none the worse for wear. Aika and Fina would ever follow him without a word from him. Gilder would do it just to prove he could, and Enrique because he figured he was needed, and Drachma would do it grumbling all the way but go he would. As would they all.

Different dreams, but the same shared purpose united the crew of the Delphinus. For money or fame, for learning or the joy of discovery, or just because it was the right thing to do.

It was a rough, tough world out there, and Polly had always known a woman had to be just as rough and tough to survive it. But Vyse had a way of making people forget that, of remembering the dreams they'd all had back when they were young and the world of Arcadia had seemed to fresh and new and wonderful.

And even if it all ended in tears, she'd see it through to the end.


	2. Robinson, pregame

He knew, when he thought of it at all, that he lived an empty existence. He was alone on his little floating island, in his broken ship. He had not even himself for company, for he had no memories, no past. Only the vague certainty that Before, things had been different. There had been more than himself, and more than his island. Yet he had been here for as long as he could remember.

He lived in an endless night illuminated only by the glowing, floating plants. Time did not exist, in this place. When he was tired, he slept. When he hungered, he went outside his little room and used his harpoon to spear the blind little skyfish that flew in schools outside, and cooked them over a fire. The plant matter on his little island burned well, if smokily.

Sometimes, he wondered why he continued to live. He could simply walk outside his little hut, off his little island, and vanish into the darkness of the Dark Rift. Yet something inside of himself rebelled at that. He knew he had to live, though he was not sure why. Perhaps that was the kind of man he had been. So he would wait.

Tomorrow, when he woke, he would fish.


End file.
